SOLE SURVIVOR

With hundreds of Allied ships sent to the bottom by enemy torpedoes, the annals of the "Merchant Marine are filled with countless tales of courage, bravery, fortitude, and sacrifice.  Merchant seamen gave their all and more than 5, 000 seamen lost their lives in WW II.  This story that I'm about to relate to you is about a seaman who survived everything the frigid Arctic could throw at him and then some.

HERE is his story

Hope you enjoy with interest

"SHE'S GOING TO RAM US"

Men of the sea call it Bloody Foreland, and with good reason. Withing the space of ten minutes on the afternoon of 2 October 1942, 338 officers and men of the Royal Navy - my shipmates - died 100-mile off this rocky shoreline. Not as a result of enemy action, but because of an appalling accident. An accident which has gone down in the Naval annals as one of the most terrible tragedies of WW II.

CLICK: HERE

Hope you find this interesting

"THE YARD"

For more than 200 years the Washington Navy Yard has played an important part in the history of the U.S. republic and its navy.  From being an early center of shipbuilding, to producing heavy ordnance in the Civil War and two world wars to being an administrative center and keeper of the Navy's history, the U.S. Navy's oldest installation always had been a vital servant of the nation's sea services.

CLICK: HERE

Hope you enjoy this page of history

CATASTROPHE RODE THE RIVER

The worst river disaster in American history saw nearly 1600 Union Army soldiers, many of them painfully wounded, died when the boilers of the chartered paddle steamer Sultana suddenly exploded with a force that lit the night sky.  The fiery blast was heard ten miles away in Memphis but this terrible tragedy was overshadowed by news of President Lincoln's death at the hand of an assassin.

Click : Here 
Hope you enjoy

USS SNOOK (SS-279) NEVER CAME BACK

“The submarine USS Snook is overdue from patrol and presumed lost,” read the brief Navy Department Communique No. 617 of August 4, 1945.  The “Snook,” veteran of eight Pacific patrols, departed from Midway March 17, 1945.  En route to the forward area, she put in at Guam. She left Guam March 27, bound for an assigned area in the South China Sea. She never came back.

HERE is her story

WHAT IS A TRUE SUBMARINE?

Contrary to popular belief, the world had not really seen a "True" submarine until the commissioning of the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) on 30 September 1954.  Before that there were attempts to take underwater vessels on short journey with the designed purposes of exploration, sneaking up on an enemy and so forth, but the operative phrase is "short journey."

So....lets see if this article really answers the above title.

HERE is the link to some discussion on the subject....some will agree, some will not....but you got to admit....a very good subject to be mulled over.

MOUNT HOOD EXPLOSION

Yes I'm very well aware of the articles that is listed on the web of the USS Mount Hood...and I did not write this article to say that I'm bringing anything new to the surface on this incident.

To the left you see a ship that was peppered with holes...all from the bits and pieces from the Mount Hood explosion....in fact there was no piece larger than 10-ft of the ill-fated ship.  

Yes, it was an instant explosion snuffing out all of 375 sailors...plus and additional 45 lives from falling parts...and injuring 371.

HERE is this god-awful story

THE SUB-WAY SAILORS THAT SAVED NEW YORK

A batch of those land-based Coast Guardsman sometimes jeeringly referred to as “subway sailors” were dawdling in their Jersey City barracks at 5:30 p.m. on the afternoon of
24 April 1943. They were waiting for supper and, afterward, the pleasures of liberty. It was payday and the day before Easter, and New York, in a holiday mood, was just across the harbor.
Well things did not turn out the way these guys was getting their hopes up for....in fact they didn't know it at the time but they would be "heroes" at the end of this ordeal.

Click HERE for the story

BACK WOOD'S BOOT CAMP

Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the 'light-bulb' lit up in the US Navy....the three recruit training stations - Newport, Rhode Island; Great Lakes, Illinois; and San Diego, California - were really stuffed to the breaking point.

Well it was decided that four new training stations, two in the east and two in the west.
This article is about one of those stations in the west located at the end of Lake Pend Oreille in the panhandle of Idaho.  It would be called the Farragut Naval training station.  So here is the story on how that site was made into a training base.

Hope you find it interesting

Click HERE

SUNK BY A U-BOAT

This particular article was authored by a gentleman that  became a Midshipman after attending the US Merchant Marine Academy in 1940.

He tells of having a ship he was on ...the SS Stag Hound torpedoed out from under him.  This is not an  intense article...has some humor, the rescue details and so forth and so on...

Is it interesting....yes, at least I thought it was ....I think anytime you hear "first hand" what someone went through in the time of war....is extremely interesting.

If you wish to indulge in this article...Click HERE

Hope you enjoy

MERRITT-CHAPMAN AND SCOTT

THEY MADE MARINE SALVAGE A

MAJOR ENTERPRISE

Organizing a handful of salvage vessels into a dynamic force on the high seas, these resourceful entrepreneurs revolutionized sea salvage.

In 1860 the Board of Marine Underwriters of New York City started to get uneasy with the number of shipwrecks they were having to shell out money for.

So they decided to establish  the Coast Wrecking Company to get these wrecks stabilized....they appointed Israel J. Merritt to head up this operation.  This article is about how this all came about

click on this to read: MERRITT-CHAPMAN AND SCOTT

SS EAGLE [FREIGHTER & TANKER]

The SS Eagle being built in 1917 listed as a freighter.    She was actually chartered to the U.S. Army late in 1917 for WW I service.

Then in mid 1918 she was named Peerless.  Late in 1918 the U.S. Navy got interested and commissioned her.  So for a short time period she was commissioned USS Peerless

So here is the documentation on her...and how she got damaged by the German U-boat U-513.

Click: HERE for the short article

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TAMING THE BEAST

THE SAGA OF THE CURTISS SB2C

HELLDIVER

In wartime it is not uncommon for certain weapons to be rushed into production simply as a matter of logistic expediency.  Then again, it's often a matter of political dynamics where in Newton's Law that objects in motion tend to remain in motion is mindlessly perpetuated, as in lucrative government procurement contracts.  There were dozens of examples of this phenomenon in WW II which often saw ships built that were not needed, tanks mass-produced that blew up with such frequency that they were nicknamed "Ronsons," or guns delivered that no one dared to fire.  But few of these boondoggles reached the enormity of the saga of the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, a dive-bomber that went on to win combat laurels even though it's very existence caused a scandal which eventually collapsed one of America's largest aircraft manufacturers, the once-esteemed Curtiss-Wright Corporation.

Hope you give it a read.....this is extremely interesting to read....it will blow your mind!!!

Click: HERE

AMPHITRITE : CONVICT SHIP

Here is a short article about one of the many 'Convict Ships' that went back and forth from Great Britain to the Australian Colonies....

She encountered a huge storm....landed on a sand bar off the coast of France.

All but three drowned.....and wait until you read about why this happened....WOW!!!

Just click HERE if you wish to give this a going over.

CSS ALABAMA - CONFEDERATE STATES NAVY CRUISER

Well folks this, at least to me, is somewhat of a strange tail about what started out to be a ship built by the British, but the building of the vessel was overseen by a Captain of the Confederate Navy.

Once completed then there was some heated discussion on whether this "290" which was assigned to this vessel while on the blocks, was going to be permitted to leave port.

Well she did "sneak" out of port...and went on a rampage of  a true raider or merchant ships.....

Ok.......I've said enough...I'll let you read this short article on just how much hell this vessel done....and in the end....you'll be very surprised at who "paid the bill" for all this.

You can read about it HERE

BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

Early during the Civil War, President Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, realized the necessity of capturing New Orleans. With a population of 170,000, it was the largest city of the Confederacy. More important, however, was the fact that the inland seaport controlled the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Welles believed that whoever dominated the waterway would win the war.  On the west side of the river were three states which had cast their lot with the South - Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. If they could be cut off from helping the rebels, then the Confederacy would be blockaded, both along the river and the east coast.

On 12 November 1861, Cmdr. David Porter approached Gideon Wells with a plan to capture New Orleans by using the Federal Fleet. Porter advocated a heavy bombardment of the river defenses followed by a quick thrust by fast Naval vessels up the channel to the city. The adventuresome young officer planned to use 13-in Army siege mortars, mounted on dismantled schooners, to reduce the enemy fortifications.

Now I'm not attempting to imply that this article has something "new" to this event.....but it certainly does, in my opinion lead the reader to the true "Hell" that both sides went through in this battle...I just found Mr. Tombs memoirs most interesting.  So here is "The memoirs of Engineer James Tomb offer an eye-opening perspective on one of the Civil War’s most-controversial battles."

BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

Hope you find it super interesting.

SS DUNCAN L. CLINCH [LIBERTY SHIP]

Now here is a "Liberty Ship" that was assigned a name that goes back a few years......Oh yes, way back to 1816 when the Seminole War broke out

Colonel Duncan Lamont Clinch....was much endeared by the slave-owners of Georgia....well that is a tad of a story in itself...so I'll let you indulge in that if your interest in what happen to the Liberty ship named after this Colonel.

The SS Duncan L. Clinch...didn't have a long sea life, but she did give it her all.

Here is her short story

SS Duncan L. Clinch